Detroit Tigers pinch hitter Miguel Cabrera reacts after grounding into an ninth-inning double play in a baseball game at Yankee Stadium in New York, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. The Yankees defeated the Tigers 1-0. For the better part of the month of August, the Tigers have struggled offensively, losing twice by 1-0 scores.
KATHY WILLENS — The Associated Press

“Our guys have to hit better. You can’t keep going and getting players all the time. After a point, they gotta hit. They gotta do what they need to do.”

And, in the last month, they haven’t.

The best American League team by average (.272), slugging percentage (.327) and OPS (.424), and the fifth-highest scoring team in baseball (576 runs after Friday), the Tigers have slid well down those lists, when you look at production since the start of August.

They came in to Saturday 10th in baseball in runs scored this month (despite being tied for the most games played), 16th in average (.248), 15th in slugging (.376) and 15th in OPS (.687).

“It is baseball, but we need to play better. We’re a better team than this. Period,” manager Brad Ausmus said after the last homestand.

“We’re a better offensive team that what we’ve seen since the All-Star break, and we just need to swing the bat better. We need to drive guys in from second, get guys in from third with less than two outs. We gotta put pressure on the defense, pressure on the pitcher. We need to swing the bat better, period.”

It’s been more of an exclamation point, actually. Or a question mark.

Where’s the offense gone since the first half?

Runs per game are down from 4.80 in the first half, to 3.97 after the break. (Since the Tigers entered Saturday 47-7 when they score five or more runs, and 21-51 when they don’t, is it really a surprise they’re 15-21 from the break, through Friday’s blowout loss?)

They’ve lost a collective 30 points off the team batting average, 20 points off the on-base percentage, 70 points off slugging and a whopping 90 points off OPS.

If you want, you can lay that issue at the feet of the trade that sent Austin Jackson to Seattle, as a package that brought in David Price. (And, in part, that’s a contributing factor — just as it is for the Oakland A’s, who gave up Yoenis Cespedes to acquire Boston ace Jon Lester.)

You can lay that at the feet of several members of the regular crew who are struggling, if you want — whether it be the shortstop combination of Andrew Romine and Eugenio Suarez, or if it be the catching platoon of Bryan Holaday and Alex Avila.

Or a guy like J.D. Martinez, who was an explosive offensive producer in the first half, and has come back down to Earth in the second half.

Or a guy like Nick Castellanos, who’s shown the rookie inconsistency that everyone shout have expected.

But you also have to lay the blame at the feet of the guys who are supposed to be stalwarts.

Guys like Ian Kinsler, Rajai Davis and Torii Hunter, who haven’t had good second halves. Guys like Miguel Cabrera who, despite good total numbers in RBI and extra-base hits, had stockpiled much of those numbers before a very uncharacteristic power outage.

You have to look no further than Thursday’s 1-0 shutout in Tampa — when the Tigers wasted a complete-game one-hitter by David Price — to see the problem. It was the antithesis of the offense’s grind-it-out mentality against Felix Hernandez in Price’s previous start, when they knocked the Cy Young presumptive out early.

This is a team issue — not just one or two guys — and the only way the Tigers are going to turn things around, and make the playoffs again is to correct it.

And that fix is going to have to come through without the added assistance of a piece from outside.

It’s not going to be Castillo, even though he was being hailed as a possible savior by some.

“We had a long discussion — we didn’t think there was any way he could help us this year,” said Dombrowski, who indicated the Tigers had offered Castillo’s camp a 2015 contract, but were deemed out of the running by Monday.

“When you look at the situation, he hadn’t played in really a year and a half, basically. Our guys saw him in workouts, and he was drained after. So he’s not even in baseball playing shape, to get to that point. Then to thrust him in a pennant race? ... We just didn’t think that was practical for this year.”

It’s also not going to be Andy Dirks, who’s basically been ruled out for the season.

It’s not going to be any number of wildly concocted waiver-wire deals.

More than likely, the farm system’s not going to provide a savior, either. Guys like Steven Moya and James McCann might be up in September, and make the Tigers better by their presence, but it’ll be incrementally better, not monumentally.

No, any improvement will have to come from within.

If there’s one phase of the game where they have the pieces in place to do so, it’s offensively.

Kinsler, Davis and Hunter are all better than they’ve shown in the last few weeks. Cabrera is still an elite hitter, even if he’s not 100 percent “right.” Victor Martinez has been a machine all season long.

If the pitching staff gets healthy, there’s enough power there — with Price and Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello — to give the Tigers a chance in any postseason series.